


Fractious

by Patchouli (lifelesslyndsey)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Because I like irony and tropes, DerekxStiles eventually, M/M, Magic Made Them Do It, Not-a-twin-fic, They're named Gemini, and DerekxStilesxStiles, but Stiles might as well be one person, but sort of a twin fic, i dont know how to tag help me, it's like Dawn From Buffy but instead of a little sister Stiles just gets another Stiles, it's not incest if it's yourself, not sex but unexpected duplication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:04:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3538943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifelesslyndsey/pseuds/Patchouli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pulling himself up, Stiles frowned. “I’m pretty sure you’re me,” he argued, and then shook his head. “I mean, you’re the doppleganger.” </p><p>	“No I’m not,” He argued  back, frowning. Stiles wasn’t use to looking at his face like this; he didn’t like it. “I’m not.” </p><p>	“You might be." Stiles was suddenly uncomfortable with the fact that he himself might be. “Does it matter? Why are there two of us? “</p><p>	Other Him lifted up a book - familiar and old and very very ominous looking. “I’m thinking I finally cracked the code.”</p><p>	“It might have been me,” Stiles snatched the book from the Other Hims’ hand. “I worked on this thing for over a year--” </p><p>	“Yeah if by you, you mean me---”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fractious

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know what im doing. this isn't betad. this is a weird whim written on a friday night. im a mess.

The book was old, its pages brown and stiff with its years. It wasn’t written in Latin, in the way that so many of Deatons’ other books were. Indeed, it was a mishmash of every language, old and new and non-existant.  Deaton had told him he couldn’t read from it, no one in living memory could. But Stiles could. It had taken him a year and some days to do so, but he could read it now as easily as the Sunday paper. The cover was made of hyde, but not leather. Stiles suspects it’s human skin.  He handled it delicately, wincing every time the spine cracked as he turns a page.

 

He’d be eighteen in twenty-two minutes.  Deaton promised him that it would happen then, if ever. His spark would change tonight, from candle flame to fire. And if it didn’t, it wouldn’t.  It wasn’t so much that the power laid beyond the eighteenth year, but rather the significance in the day.  Long ago, it was sixteen, and before that, younger.  But now, the age of majority was eighteen years.  Twenty-one minutes to go.

 

He’d stripped himself bare in the forest, coming to the clearing as he was born; naked but for his skin.  It was chilly, but the faint vestigial frost of North California winter was long gone; pale green buds had already began to unfurl themselves early and eager.  He dug his toes into the grass, and held the book up to the moonlight.  

 

“ _Pir dang via užitak, seva dyfishtë zabavno_ ,” he read, at exactly one forty-six am, the time of his birth.  Make me strong, he asked the moon. Make me more. _" ‘dVojposteľová, Mother Earth.”_ Crouching down, Stiles buried his fingers into the soil. He raised a fistfull to the moon in offering. “ _Bikoitza, Mother Moon.”_

 

Around him, the ground began to glow.  Something in the air crackled, a tangible force he couldn’t see, like the wind but much more wicked. The fire in his belly grew, glowing hotter and brighter until he thought it might swallow him whole. It was happening, like Deaton said it would.  It took a spark to start a fire.

 

He continued reading from the book, and the words poured out easily as if he knew every language like his first.  “ _Gehiago_ ”, he cried.   _“Więcej, vairāk, stiprāka, drošāku, pan fydd un yn gwneud dau.”_ The book fell shut between his fingertips, and Stiles closed his eyes. The invocation had found him, like the book promised him it would. “Of one, make more. Divide me, and sew me whole. Of one, make more. The power of the moon, the earth, and the Spark, I beseech thee, make me more.”

 

A storm rolled overhead, thunderous and violent. Rain fell against his skin, and Stiles smiled.  With rain, the world grew and so would he. He fell to the forest floor in one slow slide, thumping hard against the soft moss as the dark of night wrapped him up in the blankets of starry darkness.

 

The Moon and Earth had heard him.

 

 

***

 

“Holy Shit."

 

Stiles didn’t want to open his eyes.  He’d never been this hung over in his life.  “Gaaah,” he groaned, rolling over. His sheets were scratchier than normal, and they sort of smelled like mildew and dirt. “Go away.”

 

“Yeaaah,” the voice drawled, sounding familiar in a way Stiles couldn’t put his finger on. “Gonna have to insist you _wake the fuck up_.”

 

“Who the---” Stiles froze mid sentence, eyes wide open and looking up into his...own face. “Holy shit.” Sitting beside him on the damp grass was _him_.  Himself Stiles couldn’t deny it - that was him. His face, his hair, his eyes. His deep expression of confusion and mistrust. “What did I _do_ last night?”

 

“You?” The other he said, reeling back. “You’re not even real!”

 

“Of course I am,” Stiles argued, feeling sick to his stomach. “Non-existent people can’t feel this terrible.”

 

The other He ignored him. “So. You’re me.” He looked at Stiles. “I can tell. You don’t just look like me, you feel like me. Whatever happened last night, I can feel that you’re me.”

 

Pulling himself up, Stiles frowned. “I’m pretty sure you’re me." He shook his head. “I mean, you’re the doppleganger.”

 

“No I’m not."  Stiles wasn’t use to looking at his face like this; he didn’t like it. “I’m not.”

 

“You might be,” Stiles reasoned, suddenly uncomfortable with the fact that he himself might also be. “Does it matter? Why are there two of us? “

 

Other Him lifted up a book - familiar and old and suddenly very very ominous looking. “I’m thinking I finally cracked the code.”

 

“It might have been me.” Stiles snatched the book from the Other Hims’ hand. “I worked on this thing for over a year--”

 

“Yeah if by _you_ , you mean _me_ \---”

 

Stiles paused, fingers clenching on the book. “I think we’re the same person.” The Other Him gave him _duh_ -sort of look. “No, I mean... We both think we spent a year decoding this book? We both think we’re the real Stiles?  We...might both be.” He tapped the book. “The spell was for doubling power.”

 

“Which...” Other Hims’ eyebrows rose high on his head - did he really look so goddamn ridiculous? “Which we accomplished, apparently. This is...really bad. I’m pretty sure this is really, really bad.”

 

“Shouldn’t have read the book,” Stiles agreed. “Definitely should not have read from the book.”

 

Other Him scratched at the back of his neck. “What are the chances that when Deaton said we couldn’t read from the book, he meant we _shouldn’t_?”

 

“Highly likely,” Stiles agreed. He suspected as much from the get-go, but loop-holes were a specialty of his. “Kind of regretting some life choices right now. This is really bad.”

 

“What. The. Fuck.”

 

Stiles and Other Stiles both jerked, twitching where they sat in a mess of naked limbs on the forest ground. “Uh...” Other Stiles said, glancing at Stiles face. “Um.”

 

“What the fuck Stiles?” Derek said again, his eyes wide in his pale face. “Just--- What the fuck, what the fucking fuc---”

 

“So I maybe got drunk at Scotts  and read from the magical book of no-no spells I stole from Deatons clinic a year ago,” Stiles caved like a house of cards, looking to Other Stiles for confirmation.

 

He nodded. “And then I might have ran naked through the woods from my own party to summon the Earth and Moon to make me stronger - make me more. The book...The books said it had to be during the Rising.” Derek knew what the Rising was - Stiles had been talking about his magic-mojo-go-go day for weeks.

 

“I....,” Derek stared at them for a long moment. “Honestly, I’ve got nothing. There are just...No words. You’re sitting in a fucking fairy ring! Under a full moon, summoning goddamn All Mothers---”He sighs, and looks to the sky. "Did you offer the goddamn Mother Moon _fairy-ring dirt?!_ "

“Oh shit,” it came from both of them, as they swiveled their heads to eye the ring of mushrooms surrounding them. That would.... That would definitely do things. To the spell. Fairy-magic was wild. 

 

Stiles stomach twisted. “Oh shit, oh wow. That’s. That’s really bad.  Wow. Bad.”

 

The other Stiles looked just as green. “Explains a lot, though.”

 

“Well yeah---”

 

“We’re going to Deatons,” Derek barked. “I have clothes for one of you in the car.”

 

“Rock paper scissors?” Other Stiles offered, side-eyeing him.

 

***

 

Derek had thrown the jeans and shirt out the car window after the seventeenth draw between Stiles and Other Stiles at rock-paper-scissors.  “Just get in the fucking car,” he’d growled, shoving them both into the back seat. “We need to fix this. The world cannot handle two Stiles Stilinskis.”

 

The thought made Stiles sick; one of them would have to go. Go where, he couldn’t say. Back? But where was _back_? Would they just vanish from existence, or--- “Right,” he said, eyeing Other Stiles who eyed him right back.  Stiles had no idea who the original Stiles was. “Right.”

 

***

 

“You read from the book?” Deaton held the tomb between his hands the way some people might hold a bomb or a baby. “This book?”

 

“I’ve been regularly taking it out of the clinic for like a year,” Other Stiles replied mildly. “You had to have known.”

 

“I did.” Deaton looked nonplussed, but Stiles knew he was curious. “You cannot read from this book.”

 

“We beg to differ,” Other Stiles jerked his head towards Stiles. “We can read from it just fine."

 

“No,” Deaton said. “This book is unreadable. The words aren’t words, the letters aren’t letters. Whatever you thought you read - the book wanted you to see.  Whatever spell you cast...The book created for you.”

 

“And?” Derek asked impatiently. “Undo it.”

 

“You can’t undo a spell that doesn’t exist,” Deaton explained. “The spell Stiles read doesn’t exist, and a spell to reverse it exists even less.  It can’t be undone.”

 

“Okay,” Derek’s gaze was incredulous. “Well what the fuck do we do? Send one of them away---”

 

“No!” Both Stiles snapped in tandem. “You can’t----” They spoke over each other, but the words fall together to create a whole sentence. “My dad, I can’t just leave my dad.”

 

“Short of death, there is no eliminating one or the other.” Deaton paused. “And the death of one could very well kill the other. They are cleaved, Derek. They are one made into two.  Like Castor and Pollux. One soul. One mind. Two bodies. There is no original, no copy, no duplicate. They are one.”

 

“We can’t exactly explain away a second Stiles.” It’s the first reasonable thing Derek’s said since he found them, frankly. “No one is going to believe in a long-lost-twin. Unless you have something like Dawn from Buffy---” 

 

Deaton hummed thoughtfully. “There are spells.”

 

“Of course there are,” Stiles griped. The other Stiles rolled his eyes. “There are always spells.”

 

“They’re intricate,” Deaton ignored them. “Delicate. They require much.  Blood of the father, blood of the son. They must be bound too, in permanence. A rune won't work, unless it is cemented in the soul. Or in this case, the skin.” He picked the fucking book up, and handed it to the Stiles’ “My best suggestion is that you consult the book. If we’re t re-write history to fit a second Stiles, it’s by no magic I know. But the book would not have created you, if not in accordance to the Harmony of Earth.  That you exist at all is proof enough that you are meant to be. It will tell you what you need to know.”

 

***

 

It involves summoning the owner of the Fairy Ring. They apologize for the damage to the fairy ring. A small blood donation is made in exchange for actual fucking fairy-dust which Deaton grinds into a pigment of a color so beautiful it has no name. It involves Stiles dad, staring from Stiles to Stiles in silent, gaping horror. It involves yet again, more blood. This time from his dad. Incantations. Runes. More blood. Sweat. Some very manly tears.

 

It involves tattoos. Oh god, did it involve tattoos. The fairy volunteers to do the tattooing . He was a long-limbed dude with a name that sounded like Milichovechi if you were drunk and deaf and just had your molars pulled.  Stiles could tell they were mangling the pronunciation every time the dude winced.  He was a chill dude though, and even wore the pants Derek gave him with an easy grin. “Humans - such prudes,” he laughed as he pulled them on. His voice made birds sing, and brooks babble, and the wind hum gently over the fucking moors . He was a Seelie, apparently. The Unseelie were less...well....pretty.

 

It involves the Nemeton.

 

Stiles and Stiles knelt over the stump, mother-naked under the waning moon. Milichovechi split himself in two as easy as breathing, and marked Stiles’ backs in smooth, tandem motions. It was not a small tattoo. Not a single, simple rune.  It was as Deaton said - they were rewriting _history_.  Re-writing it right into their own skins.  And so long as they lived and breathed, so would their story.  Those who look upon either Stiles would always remember two where there was once only one. All but a few - their father, their pack, and Deaton.

 

It hurt, and they bled.  The Fairies started at the nape of their necks and worked down in tortuous inches.  Their back is marked, their arms are marked, their fingers are marked in rings and wode.  Stiles is marked on his one half, from neck to foot, and the other Stiles is marked on the other, like a mirror match of a puzzle piece.

 

“What is your name?” The Fairies paused, needle poised over their shoulder blades where the pack mark will lay - Derek's triskelion. 

 

"Gemini." The irony hit them before the needle broke their skin once more. 

 

_Castor and Pollux, indeed._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
